7.52 Mallarmé and Valéry — eight poems — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read five poems by Stéphane Mallarmé and three by Paul Valéry , including Le Cimetière marin . Approach the most difficult French poetry with a method: syntax first, then images, then sound. Recognise the symbolist ideal of a poetry that suggests rather than names, and its classical continuation in Valéry . Read aloud regular verse, the sonnet, the octosyllable and the decasyllable, with its music intact. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Calme bloc ici-bas chu d’un désastre obscur Calm block fallen down here from an obscure disaster Solitude, récif, étoile Solitude, reef, star Les songes vains, les anges curieux ! Vain dreams, curious angels! Lève l’ancre pour une exotique nature ! Weigh anchor for an exotic nature! Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui A swan of former days remembers that it is itself Fantôme qu’à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne, A phantom whom its pure brilliance assigns to this place, Prerequisites : 7.51 — this reading follows 7.51 Reading . The poems of 7.28 Reading and 7.31 Reading , the figures of speech of 5.24 Vocabulary and the literary forms of 5.28 Vocabulary will help. About this text Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) taught English in provincial and Paris schools for about thirty years. On Tuesday evenings his small flat in the rue de Rome received the young poets and painters of the age. He wrote little and slowly, aiming at a poetry so pure that it would peindre non la chose, mais l'effet qu'elle produit . His early poems, like Apparition and Brise marine , are still close to Baudelaire; his late sonnets are famous for their difficulty. His Poésies appeared after his death. Paul Valéry (1871–1945), born at Sète on the Mediterranean, was a disciple of Mallarmé . After an intellectual crisis in 1892 he almost stopped writing poetry for twenty years, then returned with La Jeune Parque (1917) and the collection Charmes (1922). Le Cimetière marin , first published in 1920, is set in the cemetery of Sète , above the sea, where Valéry himself is buried. Its line Le vent se lève !… Il faut tenter de vivre ! gave its title to a film by Hayao Miyazaki. This lesson gives eight poems, about 1,750 words. Mallarmé 's poems come from the eighth edition of his Poésies , published in Paris by the Nouvelle Revue française in 1914; Valéry 's from the third volume of his Œuvres , published by the same house in 1933. The Greek epigraph of Le Cimetière marin , from Pindar, is left out. The sonnet that begins Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui has no title and is known by its first line. Each line of verse is a separate paragraph. Reading Mallarmé and Valéry Syntax first. Mallarmé 's late sonnets have almost no punctuation and an unusual word order. Before anything else, find the main verb and its subject. In the swan sonnet the first quatrain is one question: will le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui , today, break with a drunken beat of its wing the hard frozen lake? The subject is aujourd'hui , the present day. Suggestion. The symbolists wanted to suggest rather than describe. The swan caught in the ice is never explained; readers have seen in it the poet trapped by his own past and his silence, unable to sing the world he should have sung. Several readings are possible, and Mallarmé wanted the reader to create the meaning. The tombeau. A tombeau , in this sense, is a poem in honour of a dead artist. In Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe , written for the monument raised to Poe in Baltimore, Mallarmé defines the poet's task in a line that became famous: Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu , to give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe. Valéry 's clarity. Valéry keeps Mallarmé 's demand for perfection but writes with classical clarity and strict forms. Le Cimetière marin is written in stanzas of six decasyllables; Les Pas and Le Sylphe in short lines. In Le Cimetière marin , the poet at noon contemplates the still sea, then death, then the paradoxes of the Greek philosopher Zeno, before the wind rises and calls him back to life. Reading it a second time, poem by poem Salut . A toast raised at a banquet: the foam on the glass becomes sirens, the poet and his friends sail together, and he drinks to Solitude, récif, étoile . Apparition . A memory of a first kiss: sad angels, a moonlit mood, and then a woman who appears in the street, laughing, like the fairy of his childhood. Brise marine . Weary of everything, the poet longs to flee to the sea, though he knows the voyage may end in shipwreck. The swan sonnet. A swan of former days, trapped in the ice of a frozen lake, remembers that it is itself, and freezes in a cold dream of contempt. Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe . Death has revealed the poet as he truly was; his age insulted him; let his tomb stand as a limit against future blasphemies. Les Pas . The poet hears the slow, silent steps of a beloved approaching, and asks her not to hasten the kiss: waiting itself was his life. Le Sylphe . A spirit of the air, invisible and gone at once: a figure of inspiration and of the poem itself, Ni lu ni compris ? Le Cimetière marin . The sea at noon, motionless and perfect; the dead in the ground; the poet's own changing mind; Zeno's arrow that flies and does not fly; and at last the wind, the waves and the decision to live. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Mallarmé and Valéry A Toast Nothing, this foam, virgin verse Only to designate the cup; So, far off, a troop is drowning Of many sirens upside down. We are sailing, O my various Friends, I already on the stern You the splendid prow that cuts The flood of thunderbolts and winters; A fine drunkenness urges me Without fearing even its pitching To carry, standing, this toast Solitude, reef, star To whate